XTRMNTR

The band continues to mine both the rock and dance worlds with a jagged gruffness that is simultaneously abrasive and catchy.... The end result, though pleasing at times, is ultimately disjointed and erratic.

Primal Scream have always understood the power of a groove and a lyrical grenade. Their entire career reaches a melting point on the raw, caustic Exterminator.... The album has its shortcomings. "Keep Your Faith" and "Insect Royalty" dip a bit too much into the more sentimental song-based style of the last record, Vanishing Point, and "Swastika Eyes" needs no reprise. But the fighting spirit keeps Primal Scream ahead of the pack.

Throughout the album, Primal Scream set a furious pace that only narrowly stops itself before the last note is spat out. In the preceding 65 minutes, what you get is as monumental a sonic statement of the times as 'Screamadelica' was over ten years ago, the first great album of the millennium and probably the best record of the year.

The album is not the flawless statement against complacency the band seemed to strive for, but it succeeds at tearing heads off, shooting fascists, and quickly asking questions later with unbelievable fury. For these reasons alone, it easily serves as one of the band's highest marks.

The band's new sound appropriates slabs of dance music, free jazz, rock and techno to create a menacing landscape of rattling beats, thundering bass and crippling distortion, dotted with lyrics that evoke urban decay and social disgust.

This is a record that will certainly find its way into the clubs and on to "best of" lists as the year goes on.

A darkly uncompromising and often difficult record: uneasy, sinister, scored and scarred with sonic detritus and, in layman?s terms, a bloody racket.

Somehow, the Primals' fury never seems misguided: This is one ball of aggression that hangs together, thanks to the band's smarts and funk.

Think of a universe far, far away, where Ministry, Raw Power-era Iggy Pop, Public Enemy, and Meat Beat Manifesto get together for a pissed-off, hyped-up jam. That's what XTRMNTR sounds like, and it's a downright amazing disc.

The most exciting album in years....as punishing and urgent as any music you've ever heard.

Think of Exterminator as a Baskin-Robbins shop that makes 31 flavors of amphetamine sulfate instead of ice cream: each flavor's totally wired and totally tasty. [Record of the Week pick]

If there's one complaint about Exterminator, apart from Bobby's rubbish rapping on Pills, it's that much of it feels like reworked outtakes from Vanishing Point.

It's an album of textural terror, a musical abrasive applied to the slick multinational machinery, via hard beats and sonic density, angry politix and dance-floor decline.

The music sounds lean and direct, focused but exceedingly angry, like the band received a collective kick in the ass from some higher power.... The first masterpiece of the new millennium... [#26, p.46]